Blog ala Vidar

I’ve been asked by a couple of people this question. Microsoft released SP1 a couple of weeks ago, but what’s the difference between 2005 and 2008, and when is the next version coming? The next version of SQL Server is scheduled for 2011 (NB! This is a rumor!!!). That’s two years. Then SQL Server 2005 will be… 6 years old. Anyhow, here’s a list of nice features that you don’t got in 2005:

For developers:

• New column types – Date, Time, Datetimeoffset, Datetime2
• MERGE statement
• Sparse Columns – Performs very good compared to large tables with many NULL-able columns
• Spatial Data types – Geometry etc
• Transact-SQL IntelliSense
• Table Valued Parameters
• Grouping sets

For DBAs:

• Easier to maintain multiple servers
• Transparent Data Encryption – Encrypt the physical database files without any application changes
• Auditing
• Resource Governor – ability to set "maximum CPU/memory usage" on heavy queries, users etc
• Data Compression – Reduce the storage requirements of both database and backups
• Performance Data Collection – Makes it easy to find issues and bad performing queries
• Integrated Full Text Search
• Policy management
• Database Mirroring – Improved compared to 2005 with automatic page recovery of corrupted pages
• Hot Add CPU